flat.
He went down the stairs to the basement. There was a door at the back leading to the rubbish room. He unlocked and opened it. He looked out at the parking places lined up along the back of the building. There was no- one about. He closed the door behind him and edged his way through the shadows along the wall. When he came to where it opened out into Mariagatan, he kneeled down and peered at waist height from behind the drainpipe.
The car was parked about ten metres behind his own. The engine was not running and the lights were off. He could make out a man behind the wheel, but could not be sure if there was anybody else in the car.
He pulled back his head and stood up. From somewhere he could hear the sound of a TV set. He wondered feverishly what to do next. Then he made up his mind.
He started running across the empty car park, turned left at the first corner and was gone.
Chapter 14
He was gasping for breath before he had got as far as Blekegatan. Once more Wallander thought he was about to die. He had taken Oskarsgatan from Mariagatan, it was not very far, and he had not been running flat out. Even so, the raw autumn air was tearing at his lungs and his pulse was racing. He forced himself to slow down, fearful that his heart would stop. The feeling of lacking the strength to do anything worried him more than the discovery that someone had been in his flat and was now sitting in a car in the street, keeping watch on him. He struggled to suppress the thought, but what was upsetting him was really his fear, the fear he recognised so clearly from the previous year, and he did not want it back. It had taken him almost twelve months to shake it off, and he thought he had succeeded in burying it once and for all on the beaches at Skagen - but here it was, back to haunt him.
He started running again. It wasn't far to the block of flats in Lilla Norregatan where Svedberg lived. He had the hospital on his right, then he turned downhill towards the town centre. A torn poster outside the kiosk in Stora Norregatan caught his eye, then he turned right and almost immediately left and could see that the lights were on in the top-floor flat where Svedberg lived.
Wallander knew the lights were often on all night. Svedberg was afraid of the dark; indeed, that might have been why he chose to become a police officer, to try to cure his fear. But he still left the lights on in his flat at night, so his career had not been any help.
Everyone is frightened of something, Wallander thought, police officers or not. He stumbled through the front door and ran up the stairs, then paused when he reached the top floor to get his breath back. He rang Svedberg's bell. The door was opened almost immediately. Svedberg had a pair of reading glasses pushed up on to his forehead, and was holding a newspaper. Wallander knew he would be surprised to see him. During all the years they had known each other, Wallander had only been in Svedberg's flat two or three times, and then only after making an arrangement to meet there.
'I need your help,' Wallander said when the astonished Svedberg had let him in and closed the door.
'You look shattered,' Svedberg said. 'What's happened?'
'I've been running. I want you to come with me. It won't take long. Where's your car?'
'It's right outside the front door.'
'Drive me back to my place in Mariagatan,' Wallander said. 'Let me get out shortly before we get there. You know the car I'm using at the moment, a police Volvo?'
'The dark blue one or the red one?'
'The dark blue one. Turn into Mariagatan. There's another car parked behind my Volvo, you can't miss it. I want you to drive past and see whether there's anybody in the car apart from the driver. Then come back to where you've dropped me off. That's all. Then you can go home to your paper.'
'You don't want to arrest somebody?'
'That's exactly the last thing I want to do. I just want to know how many there are in the car.'
Svedberg had taken off his glasses and put down the newspaper.
'What's going on?' he said.
'I think somebody's watching my flat,' Wallander said. 'I only want to know how many of them there are. That's all. But I want whoever it is in the car to think I'm still in my flat. I came out by the back door.'
'I'm not sure I understand all this. Wouldn't it be best to make an arrest? We can ask for help.'
'You know what we've decided,' Wallander said. 'If it's anything to do with Harderberg we should pretend we're not very wide awake.'
Svedberg shook his head. 'I don't like this,' he said.
'All you need to do is to drive to Mariagatan and make an observation,' Wallander said. 'Then I'll go back to my flat. I'll phone you if I need help.'
'I suppose you know best,' Svedberg said, sitting on a stool in order to tie his shoelaces.
They went down to the street and got into Svedberg's Audi, then drove past Stortorget, down Hamngatan and left into Osterleden. When they got to Borgmastaregatan they turned left again. Wallander asked Svedberg to stop when they came to Tobaksgatan.
'I'll wait here,' he said. 'The car's ten metres behind.'
Minutes later Svedberg was back. Wallander got into the car again.
'There was only the driver.'
'Thanks for your help. You can go home now. I'll walk from here.'
Svedberg gave him a worried look. 'Why is it so important to know how many there are in the car?' he asked.
Wallander had forgotten to prepare for that question. He was so focused on what he had decided to do that he had not taken Svedberg's natural curiosity into account.
'I've seen that car before,' he lied. 'There were two men in it then. If there's only the driver in it now, it could mean the other man isn't far away.'
This explanation was pretty feeble, but Svedberg raised no objections.
'FHC 803,' he said. 'But I expect you've noted that down already.'
'Yes,' Wallander said. 'I'll look it up in the register. You don't need to bother about that. Just go home now. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for your help.'
He got out of the car and waited until Svedberg had disappeared down Osterleden, then he started walking towards Mariagatan. Now that he was on his own again he could feel himself getting agitated, the nagging worry that his fear was making him weak.
He went in by the back door and left the stair lights off when he returned to his flat. If he stood on tiptoe on the toilet seat and looked through the little bathroom window, he could see the street below. The car was still there. Wallander went to the kitchen. If they had meant to blow me up, they'd have done that already, he thought. They must be waiting for me to go to bed, and for the lights to go out.
He waited until nearly midnight, then went back to the bathroom and checked to be sure the car was still there. Then he switched off the kitchen light and switched on in the bathroom. After ten minutes he switched off in the bathroom and switched on in the bedroom. He waited for ten more minutes, and switched off in there as well. Then he went rapidly down the stairs and left the building through the back door, crouched behind the drainpipe at the corner of the car park and waited. He wished he had put on a warmer jumper. A cold wind was getting up. He cautiously moved his feet about in an attempt to keep warm. By 1 a.m. the only incident of note was that Wallander needed to pee against the wall. Apart from the occasional car driving past, all was peaceful.
At about 1.40 he heard a noise from the street. He peered out from behind the drainpipe. The driver's door had opened, although the inside light had not come on. After a few seconds' pause the driver emerged and closed the door quietly behind him. He was staring up at Wallander's windows all the time. He was wearing dark clothes, and Wallander was too far away to make out his features. Even so, he was sure he had seen the man before. He tried to remember where. The man hurried across the street and vanished through the front entrance.
Then it came to Wallander where he had seen him. He was one of the men lurking in the shadows at the foot of the stairs at Farnholm Castle, on both occasions Wallander had been there. He was one of Harderberg's shadows. And now he was on his way up the stairs to Wallander's flat, perhaps with the objective of killing him. Wallander felt almost as if he were lying in bed, in spite of being where he was, outside in the street, in the
